Music and the Making of a Conservative Radical

This chapter explores the thus far unexamined early life of S. Willard Saxton. In the grand scheme of American history Saxton was not an especially significant figure: he spent most of his time in the 1850s as a Boston-based itinerant printer–perennially mired in debt–frequenting concerts and making small talk with girls he fancied. But Saxton’s unusually large and evocative manuscript diary offers unparalleled insight into the mind of a reform-minded young man who harbored a deep love for music and who cultivated an ever-developing taste for politics. Saxton’s relationship to music helped fuel his decision to cast a vote for the first time, volunteer at the polls, survive for a time as an avowed abolitionist in the South, and ultimately to interpret emancipation and Union victory as the realization of the better world that music had encouraged him to believe had always been coming. The chapter also includes details of Saxton’s relationship to John S. Dwight, experiences with Jenny Lind and the Hutchinson Family Singers, and the significance of his engagement with Fourierism and life at Brook Farm.